HealthTap Celebrates Five Billion Doctor-Answers Served by Launching
a New Smart Health Search

New proprietary algorithms enable anyone to find health information
tailored to them from the world’s largest library of doctor knowledge

October 18, 2016 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HealthTap, the world’s first Global Health Practice providing 24/7
immediate access to doctors via video, text, or voice, today announced
Smart Health Search, an entirely new way for people to find health
information that’s personalized and relevant to them.

Before today, searching for health information online was an impersonal
experience. Who you were and your health background didn’t matter – you
received the same general search results to your questions as the next
person. However, most doctors would often begin their answers to health
questions with the words “it depends,” since they didn’t know your
personal history or the context of your question. But this shouldn’t be.
Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge, HealthTap’s Chief Medical Information Officer and
double board certified doctor, who has been seeing patients physically
and virtually for more than 36 years, explains: “On HealthTap, a
24-year-old woman will see different search results from the ones a
70-year-old man receives to a question like ‘should I take iron
supplements,’ or when searching symptoms like ‘swollen ankles and weight
gain.’ That’s because women may benefit from iron supplements when
menstruating, and swollen ankles and weight gain may be symptoms of
pregnancy.”

Over the past five years, HealthTap built the world’s largest online
library of doctor-created or curated health content, and has served more
than five billion answers and health tips in response to queries for
health information. Combining HealthTap’s new enhanced search technology
with the world’s most comprehensive health ontology – created with a
network of more than 100,000 U.S. doctors – users can now leverage
HOPES™, HealthTap’s proprietary Health Operating System, to combine data
from a personal health record with a search query to receive more
tailored, relevant, and helpful doctor insights from HealthTap’s library
of health information.

HealthTap’s new Smart Health Search algorithms take into account a
variety of information about the user such as age, gender,
comorbidities, pregnancy status, and other relevant indicators stored on
the asker’s HealthTap personal health record (PHR) to match queries with
answers, tips, and checklists provided by doctors to people similar to
the user. This is done with the explicit permission of the user, and the
answers are only available to the user himself or herself, and to
doctors and caregivers the user explicitly authorized.

Now, HealthTap’s Enterprise customers (healthcare systems, hospitals,
insurance companies, and large self-insured employers) will benefit from
even more advanced personalization for their user populations through
HealthTap’s Health Operating System (HOPES™). These customers now
receive individually tailored content from HealthTap’s vast library that
also incorporates pharmacy, lab, EMR, and engagement data to enhance
search applicability and results.

“The advent of the Internet gave people an entirely new way to find a
huge quantity of health information that was organized by publishers for
mass distribution and mass consumption,” observes Ron Gutman, HealthTap
Founder and CEO. “Over the past five years, HealthTap has served more
than five billion trustworthy, instant health answers and tips from top
U.S. licensed doctors to hundreds of millions of people all over the
world. Today, HealthTap makes another giant leap forward, providing
people worldwide with quality health information that’s automatically
personalized for them by applying an extra layer of automated
personalization. In a world of ballooning healthcare costs and of slow
to no access to high-quality doctors, highly affordable access to
bespoke health information can help billions everywhere live healthier,
happier, and longer lives.”

About HealthTap

HealthTap, a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, is the world’s
first Global Health Practice. HealthTap delivers immediate, world-class
healthcare 24/7 from Query-to-Cure™. Through video, voice, and text chat
on any mobile device or personal computer, HealthTap connects hundreds
of millions of people everywhere with the most trusted health advice
from a network of more than 103,000 top U.S. doctors. HealthTap’s
proprietary, robust, and secure Health Operating System (HOPES™) and
proprietary triaging technology enable healthcare systems, payers,
employers, and technology companies worldwide to provide the right care
at the right time at the right price.